DV to MPEG2

[yellowman]

I have a Panasonic Mini DV camcorder (model NV-DS33) and am using a firewire card to capture. Capture goes fine, produces AVI file which can play in WM8. Works in TMPGEnc, however when I try to drop in i to CCE 2.5 it says "AVIFileGetStream: No data" I suspect this is a type 1 DV file, and not a regular AVI. I also get an error message in Virtualdub (version 1.48) Most everything else seems to be able to read it. I have hunted all the forums and can find how to convert this "sort of" AVI into a regular AVI so I can encode it using CCE - ultimate aim being to produce a high quality SVCD. The reason I bought a DV camera was to produce good quality, which is why I like CCE - it beats every other encoder I've tried. Any help would be much appreciated, thanks in advance.
System: PIII 1G 512MB RAM, GE Force MX200 64 meg card, 80GB HDD Windows XP Professional.

[setarip]

"Works in TMPGEnc"

From the "Files" dropdown menu, select "Output format" - you'll see .AVI as a choice. As long as your statement above is correct, you should be able to accmplish your mission.

If, when you try to do this, TMPGEnc generates an error, it may be because you haven't installed the companion VFAPI plug-in.

Let us know of your success ;>}

[yellowman]

works but...

Thank you for your solution, unfortunately there were no options for a compression codec, and so the uncompressed AVI is impractically large. If you could let me know how to output as a regular compressed AVI I would be very thankful. While you are at it is is possible to output the audio as a 44.1khz file at the same time, or is that another step?

[setarip]

"unfortunately there were no options for a compression codec"

That's not correct (I guess I should have originally mentioned it). If you look very carefully, to the far right of the "Video" "No compression 720x480 24bit" and "Audio" "PCM 48,000 16 bit stereo" you'll notice the TINIEST OF SLIVERS of "select" radio buttons.

Try it, you'll like it ;>}

[yellowman]

Star!

Your're a star - thanks. Which codec gives the best quality, and what quality level would you recommend?

[setarip]

My pleasure ;>}

As far as which codec and which settings, that obviously depends upon which codecs you've got installed. For video, I personally continue to use the ORIGINAL DivX codec (v.3.11), "Fast Motion" version, at its default settings (for videos less than two hours in length) of keyframe every 10 seconds and 910Kbps. For audio, I've been very satisfied with .MP3 sound at 44,100Khz and 96kbps (unless it's a video with a great deal of excellent music, in which case I may up it to as much as 320Kbps). If you don't already have it installed, download the Radium (modified Fraunhoefer) .MP3 codec.

The DivX 3.11 codec "pack" usually includes the Radium .MP3 codec. You can download from this site (as well as many others):

http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/dvd2avi_graphedit.html

Let us know of your (continuing) success ;>}